Alsharq Tribune- Ahmed Essam
Tesla returned to the $1 trillion club Friday, after its stock surged in the days following Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.
Shares in the electric automaker have soared approximately 23% since Wednesday — a sharp turnaround from a year in which its stock price had otherwise been moving sideways.
The new valuation also increases Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s net worth to some $300 billion, according to Forbes — increasing his net worth as the world’s richest person by more than $30 billion. Musk campaigned aggressively for Trump, who has signaled he intends to appoint the Tesla chief to a role tasked with increasing government “efficiency” that would cut programs deemed wasteful.
Through his rocket company SpaceX, Musk has been the beneficiary of billions in government contracts over the past decade. While Tesla has fewer direct contracts, it has been embroiled in multiple federal investigations and regulatory actions that could be dialed back once Trump takes office.
Tesla’s 13-figure valuation puts it among the ranks of Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook-parent Meta. Tesla previously hit $1 trillion in 2021.
Demand for Tesla’s electric vehicles has shown some signs of weakness in recent quarters, but Musk has said he is staking the automaker’s future not on environmentally conscious drivers but rather on a future fleet of autonomous vehicles. On that front, the company now faces competition from Alphabet-owned Waymo, which has already been steadily rolling out “robotaxi” services in several markets.
